The Hindu Business Line : Elusive administrative reforms

An inability to re-design organisation and administration has been the bane of the nation, and the second Administrative Reforms Commission may be as gargantuan an exercise in futility as the first was, over 35 years ago.

THE business of government is governance. On that score, governments in India have failed spectacularly. Starting with the report by Paul Appleby in 1953, thousands of pages have been written on the subject of administration.

Brilliant former ICS officers such as S. Bhoothalingam, A. D. Gorwala, L. K. Jha, B. K. Nehru and L. P. Singh have left behind their memories, thoughts and views on how the system could be re-structured to re-vitalise India.

Yet, nothing has really changed since the days of John Company. The structure that was put together by Warren Hastings and Lord Cornwallis, at the end of the 18th century still persists in India, with minor variations over 200 years. The system of district administration, with the office of the Collector as the district's chief executive, continues to this day.

The secretariats at the headquarters of the provinces have been transformed into the headquarters of State governments. The secretariat of the Central Government is as it was in 1899! Nothing has changed, other than the fact that the numbers employed in these offices have multiplied by a factor of 50 — a conservative estimate, at that.

An inability to re-design the organisation and administration has been the bane of the nation, and the second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC-2) may be as gargantuan an exercise in futility as the first (ARC-1) was, over 35 years ago.

Other than taking away the position of the Secretary (Services) in the Home Ministry, and the few Joint and Deputy Secretaries, and putting them all together into a newly created Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms, nothing ever came out of the volumes that the ARC-1 produced.

At least the ARC-1 had stalwarts such as D. L. Mazumdar of the ICS, the creator of the corporate law system in India, S. N. Mazumdar, ICS, the creator of Damodar Valley Corporation and subsequently of Hindustan Steel Limited, and R. K. Patil, ICS, of the Quit India and Bhoodan fame, as key advisers on major topics.

There has been no Malcolm Hailey (Lord Hailey) like figure in the IAS, who spent years settling the district containing the Jhelum Canal System and colonising the desert, later rose to be the first Chief Commissioner of Delhi and then Governor of the United Provinces, as UP was then known. There has been no one of the stature of Sir Girja Shanker Bajpai, ICS, Secretary to the Government, who at the age of 38, created Ministry of External Affairs, and was more feared for his intellect in the corridors of the United Nations than any of his contemporaries from around the world.

Can the members of ARC-2 alter the status quo? Or, more important, will they, as the system has served them well, and they may not want to rock the boat? For it is the rare administrator who has turned into a banker, whether a commercial banker or a central banker, and has had the courage to think outside the box institutionally.

Take, for instance, the reform moves initiated in 1991. The far-sighted series of measures opened up the economy to forces of competition and entrepreneurship.

The current Prime Minister, as the then Finance Minister, and the current Finance Minister, as the then Commerce Minister, were willing to alter the rules they were able to.

But much of what happened in 1991 was window-dressing. The office of the Chief Controller of Imports and Exports (CCIE) was re-named the Director-General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) and the Secretariat of Industrial Approvals (SIA) was re-named the Secretariat of Industrial Assistance.

No wholesale surgery there; merely band-aid palliatives. The Indian establishment has shown a marked reluctance, time and again, to create an organisational discontinuity that then significantly multiplies the positive effect of an institutional discontinuity.

In fact, it is worth going back a decade or so before 1991. The roots of the 1991 reforms lie in the realisation by the Indira Gandhi government that took office in 1980 that launched reforms by stealth. Several committee and commissions were set up to evaluate various aspects of policy. Two in particular merit mention.

In 1981, the Economic Administration Reforms Commission (EARC) was set up, with L. K. Jha as Chairman, and R. Tirumalai as a Member. The latter, who topped the first batch (1948) of IAS officers, was, therefore, the senior-most IAS officer in India.

There was no shortage of intellectual power on the EARC. That commission examined, in detail, not just the contents of specific policies and the way they were framed but, more important, how they were implemented and services delivered.

The ideas contained in the reports that were issued, if implemented, would have meant significant productivity gains for the country. Alas, these were lost.

Jha was, subsequently, a one-man Committee on Efficiency, Productivity and Exports, and his advice, given by virtue of that position, contains gems of wisdom. If these were implemented in the last decade and a half, GDP growth would have been substantial. Yet, nothing happened.

Thus, I am hardly sanguine that anything will emerge from the deliberations of ARC-2. Will the ARC-2 consist of individuals who have the courage, the vision, the wisdom and the experience to chart the course for a new India? Will it consist of soothsayers who have the ability to visualise what is required for India to be the 21st Century power?

Will it consist of individuals who have read the reports of the EARC, or the Bhore Committee Report or, for that matter, know of Sir J. W. Bhore, a brilliant Maharashtrian who joined the Madras ICS cadre at the turn of last century and who did much for institution-building in the first four decades of the last century.

The entire script dealing with administrative issues in India needs to be re-written, so that the two-century-old mould that the Indian administration is cast in is broken, once and for all.

That requires courage and wisdom. Otherwise, double-digit GDP growth rates for India will remain a distant dream.

(The author is Professor of Technology Strategy, University of Texas at Dallas. Feedback may be sent to majumdar@utdallas.edu)

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